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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

So, chillens, I’m sick with some kind of crazy fever but since I was on vacay last week, I won’t take a sick day today. If I sound crazy or if this column sucks, let’s just blame my health, shall we?

Writing nonsense through a fever is just one sacrifice I’m making today. It’s really agony, I tell you. The other sacrifice? I just listened to “Closer to the Edge,” by 30 Seconds to Mars. That was hard, guys. But the band and their new album are getting lots of shout-outs on Twitter today, and so I did what needed to be done. For you. The reader(s). (Hi, Dad…)

I was going to expound upon exactly why I intensely disliked that song, but I’m not really sure I can put it in words. I found the vocals grating, the drums seemed weirdly exaggerated and not particularly interesting, there was some odd Enya keyboard stuff happening, and it’s hard to pull off a “clapping and singing only” anthem-style interlude in the middle of a fuzzy-instrument-heavy emo song. And that’s all I’ve got.

I used to get 30 Seconds to Mars confused with Dogstar, because they both have handsome actors in them. [Insert tasteless joke about a starlet known for dating handsome actors here.] Dogstar is Keanu Reeves’s band. 30 Seconds to Mars is Jared Leto’s. Both bands get kind of grumpy when you talk too much about their famous actor members, because it’s about the music, all right?

Dogstar hasn’t done anything since the turn of the century. This is a pity because their 1996 EP is called 'Quattro Formaggi' which is a hilarious name for anything other than a pizza. I wish I’d thought to name my cat Quattro Formaggi. I would like to see more EPs with such chilling, evocative titles.

30 Seconds to Mars, however, is still alive and … emoting. Although the new album, 'This is War' came out wayyyyy back in December 2009, the band’s been on tour most of the year promoting it. On Saturday, they played T in the Park, the annual monster outdoor festival in Edinburgh, and Jared Leto wore a kilt. This is important, because Jared Leto, as we have already established, is a handsome actor, and everyone loves handsome actors in kilts.

Maybe the kilt was also a magical audio-wave distortion device that transformed 30 Seconds to Mars’s simultaneously wailing and breathy music into … something listenable. Like a vuvuzela chorus, or karaoke. That would explain some things.

Actually, the “genre” tags on Wikipedia do a nice job of explaining things. According to that fount of knowledge, 30 Seconds to Mars is hard rock, emo, neo-progressive rock, post-grunge, alternative metal, and progressive metal. If you gave me a piece of paper and asked me to write down the worst possible genre combinations, progressive emo metal neo-post-alternative hard rock would pretty much be my answer.

So, shocker: People on Twitter like progressive emo metal neo-post-alternative hard rock, and I do not. Also, Jared Leto. In a kilt. And don’t go listen to that song, no matter how many of your Twitter friends might tell you it’s speaking to them.

Role #mmodel: “@TonyCankles: #MM #MusicMonday BRAND NEW Tony Cankles "Bangers On A Set List"My #musicmonday pick: Mudhoney.Hey guys did I tell you I’m not feeling well, huh, huh, did I, huh?